Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Introduction
- 1 What Drives Children’s Services Reform?
- Part I Children’s Services Reform Under the Labour Government (1997– 2010)
- Part II Children’s Services Reform Under the Coalition and Conservative Governments (2010– 19)
- Conclusion: the Politics of Children’s Services Reform
- Appendix: Chronology of key Reports
- References
- Index
8 - Schools Reform and Early Intervention
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 March 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Introduction
- 1 What Drives Children’s Services Reform?
- Part I Children’s Services Reform Under the Labour Government (1997– 2010)
- Part II Children’s Services Reform Under the Coalition and Conservative Governments (2010– 19)
- Conclusion: the Politics of Children’s Services Reform
- Appendix: Chronology of key Reports
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Education reform is the great progressive cause of our times. It is only through reforming education that we can allow every child the chance to take their full and equal share of citizenship, shaping their own destiny, and becoming masters of their own fate. (Gove, in DfE, 2010: foreword)
It is our ambition that Academy status should be the norm for all state schools, with schools enjoying direct funding and full independence from central and local bureaucracy. (DfE, 2010: 52)
This Government believes that local areas are best placed to understand the needs of their local communities, to commission early intervention services to meet those needs and to deliver interventions. (Government response to the Science and Technology Select Committee's [2018] recommendation that a national early intervention strategy be put in place. (Cited in Lepper, 2019)
Michael Gove was appointed Secretary of State after shadowing Ed Balls since 2007 but the immediate renaming of the department signalled a change in course on children's services policy. In Gove's ‘Department for Education’, the overriding priority was the implementation of schools reform, even though responsibility for other aspects of children's policy was retained. Moreover, schools reform continued to be prioritised by the secretaries of state who followed Gove. The first section of the chapter examines the development of Gove's schools reform programme, considering the implications for the role played by schools in supporting the welfare of children. The second section examines the development of early intervention policy, taking account of Osborne's deficit reduction programme, but also Cameron's proclaimed commitment to early intervention policy and improving social justice. Policy developments on children's centres and youth services provide a good illustration of the approach taken. The final section considers the extent to which developments in early intervention policy have affected relations between government policymakers and children's sector NGOs. Thus, this chapter, alongside Chapter 9, assesses the extent to which children's services reform continued to be driven by political imperatives following the 2010 election.
The prioritisation of schools reform
The immediate renaming of the department provided an early indication that Gove was not committed to the integrated approach to education and children's policy of his Labour predecessor, and that education policy would be his overriding priority.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Politics of Children's Services ReformRe-examining Two Decades of Policy Change, pp. 127 - 148Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2020